The Supreme Court struck down a central portion of the Voting Rights Act Tuesday, effectively ending the practice in which some states with a history of racial discrimination must receive clearance from the federal government before changing voting laws.

The vote was five to four, with the five conservative-leaning judges in the majority and the four liberal-leaning justices in the minority. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote the decision.

The majority held that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, originally passed in 1965 and since updated by Congress, was unconstitutional. The section includes a formula that determines which states must receive pre-approval.

The court did not strike down Section 5, which allows the federal government to require pre-approval. But without Section 4, which determines which states would need to receive clearance, Section 5 is largely without significance — unless Congress chooses to pass a new bill for determining which states would be covered.

Given the current partisan nature of Congress, reaching agreement on a new formula may be difficult.

Thomas, missing no opportunity to make sure no one can climb up his ladder behind him, concurred, adding that he would have struck down Section 5 as well. More from SCOTUSblog.

Kay showed us the way all last year. Now we need to incorporate those lessons all across the country. It’s going to take constant effort to ensure that everyone who wants to actually gets to vote out every last damn Republican in Congress. (A blogger can dream…)

When people talk about the injustice of Bush v. Gore, they normally go on to say it brought us the tangible horrors of the Bush administration — the Iraq war, above all. But it might be time to note this is the most pernicious and lasting legacy of the decision: allowing two young/far-right justices to be appointed and form a tenuous but all-powerful majority for decisions like this.

In light of what’s going on today in state after state of the old Confederacy, it requires a level of willful blindness or (more likely) full support for five justices to pretend there’s no need for this law.

The only answer is to change Congrss, and, in circular fashion, this law will make that more difficult.

Burns, I know you care about this, so I’m not attacking you, but the concern is not state-level action (although that’s bad enough, state constitutions vary) but local elections. Precinct level. Where media won’t go. If you believe in voting rights it doesn’t matter if it’s school board or President. Every vote.

The right wing fights like the Russians at Stalingrad. We fight like the Brits in 1776, marching around in neat rows with our bright red coats. That has to change. Obama and the Senate need to be ramming through every judge that they can by whatever means they can.

Let’s remember that in the last election when people were up in arms about this not all places that required pre-clearance were trying to lock up voting, and some places that didn’t were trying to lock up voting.

Which isn’t to say that we don’t need a VRA, we do. However we need a national one and not just one where we beat the south over the head constantly and pretend that places like PA, NY, or WI don’t try to pull the same shit constantly.

The Supreme Court took over 150 years to even try to take on institutional racism in this country. Strangely, it’s taken them far less time to pat themselves on the back and insist everything’s been fixed.

@jamick6000: This is the thrashing of a people used to privilege because of the way they were born. We will have to fight it. And it require the Democrats to do the one thing they are not very good at: Working together toward a long term goal. But it’s either that, or things keep getting worse.

@Kay: We have room for both. I want to read Kay’s take. I annoucned my view below.

I agree that the decision is, for all intents, purposes, and practical effect, the death of the VRA. Eliminating the current framework for preclearance will result in the passage of lots of state/county legislation that will reduce access to the vote – for, oddly enough, those who tend to vote D. Those places where preclearance has been required have a long, consistent history of voter suppression. Now those jurisdictions can gleefully suppress the vote, get their desired result, and then say “SORRY,” when a later legal action shows the new regulations to be illegally discriminatory.

The decision is the functional death of the VRA. @burnspbesq: How will DOJ get past the “likely to prevail” requirement in these injunctive actions? If there’s not a new set of preclearance requirements, that seems to be a bit of a Catch 22.

The silver lining here is that a number of jurisdictions are going to quickly prove why we need the VRA. Let’s make it national in scope. The ex-CSA is a current problem, but Voting is a Right needing protection against future problems too. Look at the anti-Hispanic measures in some places, for example.

Always kind of figured that the history of 21st-century America would be the resolution of the question “what would white Americans be willing to discard in order to preserve their white privilege in a changing society”. We can now add “even the pretense of democracy” to a list that demonstrably already includes things like “energy independence” and “quality of life”.

In fact, I’d wager we could ultimately add “national sovereignty” to that list. If an apartheid regime proved impossible to sustain by its own resources, and a foreign power were to approach the U.S.’s white minority with a deal to prop it up in exchange for appropriate quid pro quo, does anyone think said white minority would turn it down?

The rest of our lives are going to be terrible. The good part is over.

Amy Howe: Today’s holding in Shelby County v. Holder, in Plain English: Today the Court issued its decision in Shelby County v. Holder, the challenge to the constitutionality of the preclearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act. That portion of the Act was designed to prevent discrimination in voting by requiring all state and local governments with a history of voting discrimination to get approval from the federal government before making any changes to their voting laws or procedures, no matter how small. In an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts that was joined by Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito, the Court did not invalidate the principle that preclearance can be required. But much more importantly, it held that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, which sets out the formula that is used to determine which state and local governments must comply with Section 5’s preapproval requirement, is unconstitutional and can no longer be used. Thus, although Section 5 survives, it will have no actual effect unless and until Congress can enact a new statute to determine who should be covered by it.

I’m not surprised but I’m still horrified. We used to live in Detroit, where we waited hours in line to vote. Then we moved to a well-off suburb where, to our surprise, a voter could breeze in and out. When we moved to Iowa, I switched to early voting, which is ever easier. Don’t tell me that a long wait makes no difference. I’m a dedicated voter and I’ve still skipped elections when I was overwhelmed with other parts of my life and I didn’t have hours to spare.

While it’s true that some parts of some places were, it doesn’t change the fact that “some places that require clearance didn’t try to fuck over voters, many places that did not require clearance actively tried to fuck over voters”.

The law needed to be updated to reflect the changing times regardless. With the understanding that some places will try to fuck voters over down the line. It’s not even just about minorities here anymore. You can say this is a loss now because of the Republicans, but it could drive better legislation forward. Furthermore a fight in congress on this issue would be a good thing to gain support.

I don’t see this as all that much of a “doom and gloom” issue. If anything it’s chance to try and fix something that was broken and not even doing it’s job to start with.

So the Roberts Court wants the law and the guiding Constitution to reflect the modern times. A living document, in effect. I cant wait to see how angry and furious Scalia is about this! Im sure his dissent was epic! Originalism!

@Kay: It’s clear that folks have been waiting to enact suppressive laws that will have to be fought, now that it’s gotten harder to do that. It’s the very local stuff that can be deadly to voter access. Not to mention reduce early voting hours because we don’t want to make it easy for urban voters to actually vote. Not that anyone in Ohio would actually say that outright to a journalist.

Early voting is wonderful, which is why conservatives are always trying to limit it. People love it and it’s the best organizing tool ever. A vote in the bank is a great thing. It narrows the universe for GOTV and allows really targeted election day turn out work. It takes pressure off poll-workers, too.

@mike with a mic: Well, the Court had narrower options if it wanted to use them. It could have said that the provision was unconstitutional “as applied” to particular jurisdictions. Instead they went with finding the whole provision unconstitutional in all instances.

Roberts spent much of his nomination hearing complaining about judicial activism, but apparently had no problem overturning a law that had been renewed just seven years ago with bipartisan support.

it require the Democrats to do the one thing they are not very good at: Working together toward a long term goal.

I agree but that’s only a part of it. We have to stop playing by an antiquated set of rules that the right doesn’t feel bound by.

The goal for a big chunk of the Democratic party seems to be showing how reasonable and civil it is, wanting to be seen in the beltway as The Only Adult In The Room. Meanwhile, the right is waging a scorched-earth campaign against everything decent in this country.

Typical Roberts decision, leave the law intact but make one change that prevents anyone from having access to the law’s remedies.

Part of the rational for overturning section 4 was the law was only supposed to last 5 years. One would think a justice on the supreme court would have the basic honesty to acknowledge that the law has been reauthorized a number of times, the last time 2006. And in that case it was passed by a republican congress and signed by a republican president

@mike with a mic: No, it’s wrong everywhere. But the South is and has been qualitatively different, and I don’t care if saying that plainly hurts the precious fee fees of a bunch of dumbass racists and their enablers.

The Republicans have just declared war. No bones about it. They have all out declared war on every Minority in America. They have basically endorsed the idea that white supremacy is their goal and their birthright and that they will fight to the death to maintain that. Four white guys and one Uncle Tom coon who has been a DISGRACE to the very seat he took over from Thurgood Marshall 23 years ago voted to relive Paula Deen’s dream America. Some of us fell asleep at the wheel. In 2000, my father kept saying that THAT election and my Grandfather’s assertion that the 1980 election would lead to a reversal of all our ancestors fought for is being proved right every day. This is war now. They have declared it. We cannot ignore it. We cannot pretend it is not in existence. June 25, 2013 is the new Plessy v. Ferguson and we need to fight to the death if need be to drown out the folks who long for the days of the Antebellum South and Jim Crow. We are at war and I’m tired of giving the benefit of the doubt about it.

So, if preclearance can still be required, but the formula for deciding which jurisdictions it’s applied to can no longer be used, how about the DOJ says, we don’t need no stinkin’ formula, we’ll apply preclearance to everybody.

This is sort of high falut’in punditry, and I can’t prove it, but my feeling is that conservatives lost a kind of conceptual battle, on “right” versus “privilege”.

Not in a legal sense, but in how people think about voting. I saw a real change. Palpable anger at what was perceived as a real attempt to take something away. It was even a little much for me, some of it was conspiracy theory stuff, and this was coming from white, older, rural Democrats. I found myself saying, “look, they’re not ALL in on it. YOU KNOW the Bd of elections members, and YOU KNOW half of them are Democrats”:)

Enter John Bolton. Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is being encouraged by several leading conservative power brokers to consider a presidential bid.

Bolton, who briefly considered running for president in 2012, hasn’t made up his mind. But sources tell me that he is moving closer to giving the idea serious consideration — serious enough to travel to Iowa and New Hampshire.

Democrats are – hopefully – going to spend a lot of time thinking about how and why today’s verdict happened. Elections do have consequences. So does strategic planning WRT litigation and the courts. We’ve been really bad at that.

I agree but that’s only a part of it. We have to stop playing by an antiquated set of rules that the right doesn’t feel bound by.

The goal for a big chunk of the Democratic party seems to be showing how reasonable and civil it is, wanting to be seen in the beltway as The Only Adult In The Room. Meanwhile, the right is waging a scorched-earth campaign against everything decent in this country.

My suggestion would be to move election day to a Saturday or Sunday (oh dear…I can hear talibangicals screaming their Mammon addled heads off now), and have the polls open for the same 24 hour period across the entire country, without regard to local time.

Or, just do what we do in Oregon…make all voting absentee. Get your ballot in before 8PM local on election day.

Of course, this doesn’t address the real problem that the VRA was all about, which is how some jurisdictions went, and will go, out of their way to suppress voting by some groups on the basis of racism, economic discrimination, or that some groups will vote “wrong”.

It DID apply everywhere. It’s just that SOME places need to be more carefully scrutinized than others. Based on historical patterns. Which means the old Confederacy, for the most part, that used the color of law to restrict voting and defy the clear intent of the VRA. Which is why they were singled out (along with others) for special scrutiny.

Forgive me for not thinking the world is ending and we all need to start flinging ourselves out of windows.

I don’t think calls for mobilization and protest are the same as flinging oneself out a window. If you do think that, please ask for a second opinion before you decide to protest. No one wants to clean you up off the concrete.

So, here’s the deal. A stupid congress is not a permanent condition, that’s correct, but we have to be able to vote them out. If people can’t vote, then yes, it becomes a fairly permanent condition. So while it would be nice to think we could get legislation passed that updates the VRA to count for all states and take into account modern attempts to keep the wrong people from voting, there is nothing close to proof to believe that would happen. You’re opinionating on hope.

Only halfway through the comments, so far, but for those of you proposing mass protests, that doesn’t mean shit to our betters in Congress. You think Paul Ryan, Virginia Foxx or Louie Gohmert give a flying fuck about what you think, mask or no? They are psychopaths, pure and simple.

I like the way you think, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter. However, that won’t work. Preclearance is tied to “the prohibitions of section 4(a),” and section 4(a) is tied to the coverage formula.

Off-topic (sorry), but this will be of interest to Snowden watchers. The Beeb reports he got off the plane from Hong Kong, but is still in pre-immigration in Moscow; so technically he’s not yet on Russian soil. Now I’m thinking of that movie where Tom Hanks is stuck in an airport for years.

I think Durbin and Brown will be on it, based on the fact that they were on it in 2012, and that was state-level. The “field hearings” were a stroke of genius, politically. I will never forget the AA ministers filing into the jury box to ponder the testimony of Ohio’s state-level Republicans. Just beautiful. They were the jury and Durbin and Brown were where the judge should go.
I expect Republicans to somehow ban this “field hearing” thing :)

Democrats are – hopefully – going to spend a lot of time thinking about how and why today’s verdict happened. Elections do have consequences. So does strategic planning WRT litigation and the courts. We’ve been really bad at that.

The paid progressive activists are going to whimper about Snowden, and will go all in on the right of naked aggressive panhandlers to draw feces art on downtown San Francisco tourist attractions.

The goal for a big chunk of the Democratic party seems to be showing how reasonable and civil it is, wanting to be seen in the beltway as The Only Adult In The Room. Meanwhile, the right is waging a scorched-earth campaign against everything decent in this country.

Exactly. They know they will never get “those people” to vote for them, so they make it more and more likely that “those people” can’t vote at all.

And just wait until the repub-controlled state legs start talking about proportionallity in the electoral college. When enough states give electoral college votes based on their gerry-mandered voting districts, the coup will be complete.

I just started reading the case, and I am simply dumbfounded that the majority cites the 10th Amendment as constitutional authority to overturn a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. That would make sense if no clear constitutional authority gave the federal government the authority to prevent racial discrimination in voting. The 15th Amendment, however, is as explicit a grant of Congressional power as anything that exists in the Constitution. Congress is entitled to maximal deference in this area. Even after nearly a decade of shocking decisions, the reasoning in this case strikes me as exceptionally obtuse and even perverse.

I guess this helps prove Glenn Greenwald’s argument that there difference between electing Republican Presidents and Senators and that Obama is the worse of the worse (NOT!!!). If Gore had been elected in 2000, then Roberts and Alito would not be on the court, which should be called Roger B. Taney memorial court.

@lol chikinburd: If an apartheid regime proved impossible to sustain by its own resources, and a foreign power were to approach the U.S.’s white minority with a deal to prop it up in exchange for appropriate quid pro quo, does anyone think said white minority would turn it down?

Didn’t they already take that bet? I won’t argue that there weren’t some benefits to engaging China in the way that we did, but there was certainly some white supremacy lurking in the unholy union of business and government interests to hide the sausage of falling real wages by importing cheap Chinese goods.

I remember all the screaming under W that we’d never take things back, we did and then screwed it all up.

Pre-clearance as it already stood wasn’t really working. There were far too many areas not subject to it in the proper fashion that were happily marching along screwing people over. What happened, people got pissed and voted like crazy. That can happen again.

Either way this was something that needed to be fixed for a long time, but wasn’t because of the assumption that only some dipshits down south had this issue and they were already covered. If this leads to a proper solution rather than slapping a bandaid over a sucking chest wound and having a group laugh about the south it will be for the best.

I also think this is something that elected Democrats might be willing to actually fight for and make a public issue out of, also a good thing.

@mike with a mic: Forgive me for not thinking the world is ending and we all need to start flinging ourselves out of windows.

You’re right. The world is not ending. Instead, silently, invisibly, over a period of a coupla years, the South will simply reinstate Jim Crow as they have been doing inch by inch for 25 odd years now. The world is not ending, but things are a big hairy mess and getting worse.

Tom: Thomas, missing no opportunity to make sure no one can climb up his ladder behind him, concurred, adding that he would have struck down Section 5 as well.

There are either three or four votes for striking down section 5 in its entirety, but not yet five votes. Should they get one vote, that’ll do it.

We’re square burns. I get what you’ve been saying. We have to stick to the opinion and not use it (politically) past the text.
We just disagree. I think they left themselves open to an attack when they posed with civil rights leaders in 2006, and spouted all that mewling bullshit about their commitment to this crown jewel of civil rights.
They took it to a court. I didn’t.

@pat: Well the real activists have been on the ground and they fought and stopped many of the voter suppression tactics in 2012 and we saw the results.

I get tired of hearing how the Democrats are always to blame (though they are not perfect) when many so called liberals on MSNBC and blogs run down the Democratic party and say there is not a dime’s worth of difference between the two, and people should not vote (ie. Ed Shultz).

The issue is not that the VRA does not apply everywhere, it’s that the VRA requires certain areas with historical disregard for voting rights to submit changes to their voting laws for review, to insure that they’re not trying to revert to their historical patterns. If you’re say out where I am, Oregon, where such restrictions once existed, but have been banished to the realm of winds and ghosts decades ago, and you haven’t been trying to bring them back, you aren’t subject to that scrutiny because you’ve demonstrated your good faith in upholding the VRA.

The way to get off the special scrutiny list is to stop trying to revert back to their old ways every single time they change their voting laws in an attempt to do so.

@Botsplainer, fka Todd: The South is the head of that particular chicken. If it weren’t for that concentration, racists elsewhere wouldn’t feel as free to show their asses.

Good point. Not to mention that we can trace the spread of slave-state racism up the Mississippi River and its tributaries to some of the most virulently racist enclaves in the North, such as Southern Indiana … almost as if the river were some gargantuan 19th century highway.

Oh sweet Buddha beneath the Bo tree. Gore kicked off his campaign by turning his back on Clinton. Then he proceeded to run a piss poor effort in which he didn’t even carry his home state. Blaming Nader for Gore’s loss is like blaming the hors d’oeuvres on the Titanic for the sinking.

The proper response is simply to make pre-clearance a national mandate. Suppression of minority voting rights is not a Southern problem anymore. It’s a Republican problem.

It’ll never pass the House, blah blah blah. But you can’t keep pre-clearance as it exists. Make it national. That way when the fuckers take over a state house in Ohio or Colorado, they can’t screw over minority voters.

@mike with a mic: I agree. I think the presidents and other Dems will run on this issues because it galvanizes the base of the party and it will awaken many occasional voters. This could drive up turnout in the next couple of elections that can lead to legislative change and more judges appointed by democrats.

Oh sweet Buddha beneath the Bo tree. Gore kicked off his campaign by turning his back on Clinton. Then he proceeded to run a piss poor effort in which he didn’t even carry his home state. Blaming Nader for Gore’s loss is like blaming the hors d’oeuvres on the Titanic for the sinking.

“[T]he Court’s opinion can hardly be described as an exemplar of restrained and moderate decision making,” wrote the leader of the court’s liberal wing. “Quite the opposite. Hubris is a fit word for today’s demolition of the VRA.”

@Higgs Boson’s Mate: I agree on your take on the Gore campaign but Nader is a shill for the republican party. It’s been documented that he received money from the republicans to divert votes from the Democratic nominees. He only attacks democrats and has nothing to say about republicans which shows that he is disingenuous.

If Nader didn’t run Gore most likely would have won Florida with enough votes to overcome the shenanigans despite his mediocre campaign. We can’t excuse the role Nader played.

@Botsplainer, fka Todd: The paid activists will go on the assignments their paymasters want, no matter what emoprog shit they’re posting on facebook.

The unpaid activists are whole-hog in immigration reform right now. You think they’re aren’t paying attention to today’s news. I think at least some Latino communities are going to be EXTREMELY mobilized in about 12 months. I worry more about hopeless places like SW Texas.

There’s also NO telling what the clown car cavalcade will do in the rust belt states that take orders from ALEC OH, MI, PA and now starring WI, 49th in growth now I think, or what the inveterate racists in the Black Belt of the Sunbelt will do, but I wouldn’t count on the African American community laying down and taking it. What they don’t have are majorities in MS,AL,GA,SC. NC is going through it right now and I can only hope that the party flippers realize that however fucked the NC Dems were the NC GOP is a horrorshow. FL has passed the point where the ratfuckery is effective. North Fl P’cola to Jax used to be the whole population, now it’s a minority. Dem folks is going down, okay?

Never said that Nader wasn’t a shill. If anyone wants to call him a two-faced, hypocritical, self-promoting asshole I will heartily agree. It did not need to come down to Florida. Sure, Nader played a role in Gore’s defeat. So did Gore.

If you want to sit on the sidelines, all smug and superior, and take random stupid potshots at people who are fighting this fight, you can do that. Getting your head out of your ass and getting in the game is also an option.

I just have to laugh, seeing people blame Nader or saying that the solution is to register more people to vote and get out and vote more. Yes, voting is great and people should do it and I do it.But it’s not just a turnout problem (turnout was great in 2012 and we still don’t have the House).

Who you gonna vote for? The pathetic group in the senate that let Roberts, Scalia, and Alito sail through? The losers with a 59 seat minority, who take years to vote on a judge? The president who was barely making an effort to nominate judges for open seats, who’s barely used his executive powers to strengthen labor?

These guys could not be bothered to fight for the people who fight for them. They’re afraid of what Chuck Todd might say about them on Meet the Press.

In some ways this won’t change much immediately. Those jurisdictions that just got out of pre-clearance are already bastions of the GOP with minorities herded off into legislative enclaves, gerrymandered districts that allows Cynthia McKinney’s old district to brush up against Newt Gingrich’s and Paul Broun’s without creating a singularity.

Citizen’s United was supposed to insure a Romney victory. How’d that work out?

Just keep registering people to vote. The Court can’t change the way America looks.

Don’t get me started. That’s one of my hobbyhorses. Election Day should be moved to the appropriate Monday (“first Monday after the first Sunday of the month,” or just first Monday, I don’t care), it should be a holiday (three-day weekend!), and voting should be mandatory, as in Australia—but the fine for not voting should be minor, $20–25 (also as in Australia, I believe).

@jamick6000: Democrats didn’t win back the House in 2012 because they didn’t vote in 2010. More Americans voted for Democratic House candidates than GOP candidates. It’s about controlling the state level institutions. Republicans understand this better than Democrats do.

@Higgs Boson’s Mate: True ! I have gone on rants before about the pathetic Gore campaign and the lack of clear strategy. I think the take away from that election and everything that came after it is that elections matter.

@Belafon (formerly anonevent): The state of GA has changed the requirements for renewing drivers licenses and voter id cards..
For my driver’s license, I need a birth certificate, proof of residency, and a marriage license since my name doesn’t match my birth certificate….

You need a multitude of these..
For voter id cards you need
An original birth certificate or certified copy of a birth certificate
Certificate of birth registration
Voter registration application
Copy of records filed in a court by the applicant or on behalf of the applicant by the applicant’s counsel
Naturalization documentation
Copy of Marriage License Application
A copy of the applicant’s State or Federal Tax Return filed for the previous calendar year
Any other document issued by local, state, or federal government so long as the document provides a reasonably reliable confirmation of the identity of the applicant
Paycheck or paycheck stub bearing the imprinted name of the applicant’s employer
An original of the annual social security statement received by the applicant for the current or preceding year
An original of a Medicare or Medicaid statement received by the applicant
Certified school record or transcript for the current or preceding year
Hospital birth certificate
An authenticated copy of a doctor’s record of post-natal care
A federal affidavit of birth, form DS-10

I believe that this was the day the GOP signed its own death warrant. They’ll confirm the verdict of history when they reject immigration reform in the House, as they clearly plan to do.

We need to organize ourselves, get voters to the polls, take back the House and break the GOP so that a civilized, open, humane democracy prevails in this country. The “good” news is that the GOP have just made it really easy to explain to minority voters why they should care.

We have not journeyed all this way across the centuries, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar candy.

@Another Halocene Human: Yes, I’m sure it is. I was thinking down the road as we get ready for 2014 elections. People have short memories, it’s summer and lots of people aren’t paying attention to news. The idea that Republicans don’t want minorities to be able to vote needs to be repeated again and again in the plainest possible language. Democrats want you to vote. Republicans don’t. Over and over again.

@Hawes: They also had a built-in demographic advantage in that particular election which would have been very hard to push against.

That’s why so many Dems chose not to run in 2010. They knew it was going to be a wave election and not in their favor.

Maybe it’s time to call into question this district packing crap. Creating a majority-minority district is one thing, when white supremacy is rampant. Creating 80-90% packed districts is straight up bullshit.

It’s also fucking destroying the Democratic Party. You can’t put up a candidate in every race if your farm team ain’t worth shit and the caucus you do have is full of grifters and backstabbers. *grumble grumble*

@Violet: I remember MTV GOTV efforts in the 1990s and somehow this feels different, with all these attacks on college student voting, the ridiculously long lines, the voter ID crap which hits very poor, very young people right where it hurts. It seems like young people in every demographic have been hit here. It’s not a theoretical nag.

I think young people are going to surprise us. But we’re going to have to help them by pushing back on these voterID poll taxes by any other name and by putting our money where our mouth is getting these kids registered and to the polls. A lot of elderly folks will need our help as well.

REAL ID is a fucking nightmare, btw. Any of you who live in MN, could you please call your state lege and get them to roll some of it back? Asking for a friend and that is NOT a joke. She still does not have a duplicate birth certificate.

The people who care about po’ folks never have any money, so they’re fucked from the start in the primary. Then the limousine liberal wins the primary and runs as a conservadem and then loses because the po’ folks know what time it is and the GOP won’t vote for a PinkoCommieLibunaticQueer.

@gocart mozart: As you say, context will kill you. Whitey Bulger got the nickname because of his hair being white at an early age. The evolution of cracker as a slur anda s a food item are completely seperate, whereas n***** is a poor comparison with no similiar evolution.

Do I think it was racist? No. it wasn’t even that provacative. It seems written to get a reaction without any research to back it up.

@Villago Delenda Est
I definitely get your point, however it seems there’s inherent problem with the VRA and “historical patterns”; how long should a state be able to screw around before getting put on the list — states like Pennsylvania and Ohio and Wisconsin come to mind.

Yes, let’s all follow the lead of Justice Ginsburg, and pray (or its equivalent) for her health. (At 80, she’s the oldest justice on the Court and rumors occasionally surface that poor health may compel her to step down.)

The Supreme Court absolutely must be an issue in 2014 U.S. Senate campaigns, and the knife’s-edge of its current composition alone should be sufficient to motivate Democratic voters. The importance of maintaining a Democratic majority in the Senate cannot be overstated. It will certainly be my battle cry.

@rikyrah: And isn’t it going to be fun to watch the Republican primary debates, where one after the other they all say “The Voting Rights Act was wrong and bad and the Supreme Court did the right thing by overturning it.” That’s some excellent minority outreach/re-branding right there.

Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.

There’s more like that elsewhere. In general the original text implies that elections were to be run locally. It looks to me that there’s an opening for centralization, but why that has never happened I can’t say.

@jamick6000: Exactly. The reasoning here is so tortured that it amounts to a judicial coup. Can you imagine Snowden arguing that the Espionage Act of 1917 is too old so it’s obviously un-Constitutional? These guys clearly went beyond their authority here. A functioning Congress would impeach them over this.

@gocart mozart: What an overweening idiot you are.
Whitey Bulger is like Biggie Smalls. I guess that’s a slur on fat people now, huh?
Kicking people in the gut indiscriminately is only funny to 15 year olds, and that’s because their brains are wired to make them uniquely lacking in empathy towards others.

I apologize to Whitey Bulger and all crackers salted and unsalted. Feel better now. At least I didn’t advocate the eating of Irish children or there would be hell to pay from you.

Gosh, I sure hope once this decision is a couple of days past we can get back to bashing Obama and the rest of his sell-out Administration, because clearly that’s what we Liberals need more of – bashing Dems.

@burnspbesq: The bona fide sidelines are currently occupied by you and mike with a mic. Think before you speak. Think about how to get from point A to point B. You have to want the end result, yes, but then you have to take well-planned, meaningful steps to get there. Spouting empty platitudes, with no game plan, is not “doing the work.”

Be humble and honest today. Take lessons from Kay, who really knows something about this. You are not the center of nor the expert in every situation you encounter. It’s okay that you’re not. You’ll survive and learn something.

Gosh, I sure hope once this decision is a couple of days past we can get back to bashing Obama and the rest of his sell-out Administration, because clearly that’s what we Liberals need more of – bashing Dems.

On one hand, Eric Holder has been extremely vigilant in protecting voting rights.

But on the other hand, his DOJ has continued to enforce the Controlled Substances Act as if it were the law of the land. And brogressives all know which one matters the most.

Being snark, I’m not sure I get your point. Calling OJ Simpson “Blackie Simspson” isn’t the same as calling James Bulger “Whitey Bulger”. It only makes sense if you had compared “The Juice” to “Whitey”, but then there is not racial component to either nickname that I’m aware of. I guess it just seemed you were pulling together a few things and assigning a racial compnent where there is none, to get a reaction. Same goes with comparing the slur “cracker” to the obvious foodstuff cracker…again it makes no sense. If the food crackers were derived from the slur cracker then sure, but it’s not. Again, I don’t think it was racist, but I think you’re the only one who knew what point you’re trying to make. Jokes never work if you’re the only one to get the punchline.

That post is stupid from end to end, even if intended as snark. The other words you brought up—cracker, fag—had legitimate definitions long before they were used as slang terms of derision. Nigger has no definition other than as a (derogatory) term for a black person.

If the post is intended as satire or humor, it is incredibly muddled. What is the intended point?

We have to act from the positive, not the negative. Sky is falling attitudes do not help. While anyone can be temporarily very disappointed (and I very much am), I know we have been “down” before and have figured ways to still rise to the challenge..

It IS just horrible.. I can’t let the feelings I have about these people sit in my stomach… The feeling that I have defies any kind of description but goes down deep into my experience as a black woman in the United States… the nature of and sheer glib reality of evil — I just have to cry a little bit —

@JPL: I bumped up against these over the top requirements when renewing my drivers’ license in the summer of 2012 when they were just going into effect. I called the state level DMV with questions in June ahead of my renewal date in September. The person on the other end of the phone said that I had a couple of weeks to renew under the old lesser requirements, which is what I did. I had had a drivers license for almost 50 years and those were the hoops I would have had to jump thru.

They were sold to us by our GOP governor as insuring that no one would be able to steal our identity. As if this were being done to benefit the average citizen. Seriously. I am so angry at what the GOP has done to voters and minorities at the state and local levels I could blow a gasket or two. The only solution is to vote them out and saner more fair minded politicians in. That takes real work and effort, especially when there is NO grass roots Democratic party in the state.

Let’s be clear about what has just happened. Five unelected, life-tenured men this morning declared that overt racial discrimination in the nation’s voting practices is over and no longer needs all of the special federal protections it once did. They did so, without a trace of irony, by striking down as unconstitutionally outdated a key provision of a federal law that this past election cycle alone protected the franchise for tens of millions of minority citizens. And they did so on behalf of an unrepentant county in the Deep South whose officials complained about the curse of federal oversight even as they continued to this very day to enact and implement racially discriminatory voting laws.

Gee. Does this mean that persons living in a state not covered by (now unconstitutional) Section 4 (i.e. Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia, including portions of California, Florida, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, and South Dakota) didn’t have equal access to the polls yesterday ?

I get the sense from the “outrage” that folks outside the covered states had/have no protections under the VRA yesterday or today, which is hogwash (except when Holder doesn’t enforce the law, as was the case in Philadelphia).

Typical Roberts decision, leave the law intact but make one change that prevents anyone from having access to the law’s remedies.

IOW, he doesn’t do anything regarding the machinery itself he just destroys the control panel?

If that’s typical of his decisions, he is like a saboteur, no?

Makes me wonder what sort of machinery he would prefer to have installed. I think if he had convincing arguments for the intent and purpose of such constructions, he would have the tools he needed to go directly after the law itself and not have to resort to monkey-wrenching the control panel.

The VRA should have been extended to every state, not removed from those that have shown again and again they WILL discriminate and disenfranchise voters.

Does this mean that persons living in a state not covered by (now unconstitutional) Section 4 didn’t have equal access to the polls yesterday?

Fucking confederate.
You think it’s unfair and unequal to treat the former CSA states as high-risk? There’s a hundred-and-fifty years-and-counting worth of reasons since the Emancipation Proclamation to treat them unlike other states.

No reason to put a guard dog where thievery is rare. You put one right where the thieves keep trying to sneak in again and again.

The court chained up that guard dog, and you are telling us how *wonderful* it is that every state is treated like its voting laws are like a bank vault and have always been like a bank vault, well-lit, monitored, secure and tamper-resistant, when in fact we know that’s not the case for those VRA states.

When every state covered by the VCA is equal to the other states in the frequency and scope of efforts to suppress minority voting, then they get to be treated the same. They’ve got one helluva legacy to live down, and they’ve done just about everything they could short of Bull Connor-style tactics in the last few elections to reaffirm the distrust they’ve earned.

Typical firebagger/crab logic: blow up the life boat because it seats only 12.

Funny how the folks who are for the states’ rights separate-but-equal bullshit latch on like leeches to the rhetoric of civil rights where words like ‘unequal’ can serve them to enact more opportunities for their separate-but-equal bullshit.

This right here is why I am a one issue voter and vote D at the Federal level exclusively – SCOTUS. This result is shit. History will look back at this court as atrocious, but fat lot of good that does us now.

So, is overturning the 13th Amendment the next agenda of the Supremely Evil fuckers who dare to call themselves “justices?” After all, the GOP platform in Texas said that’s one of the goals, along with the ending of the Civil Rights Act.

Well it would be a permanent way for the GOP to kill two birds with one stone: bringing slavery back would not only get rid of Obama and stop the voting rights of black people, it would also solve the problem of working people without having to pay them.